Your guess is correct; I did not. Upon reviewing the thread, though, I revised my redundant piling-on (not "mistake"). It would appear to me that in failing to notice I had edited my post before taking me to task you were yourself displaying the same lack of diligence. If I weren't an American and therefore incapable of recognizing it, I would probably consider that a prime example of irony.

My arrogance is gratuitous. What was yours based on?

I don't really see the irony either I must say. When I was typing my reply your original post was still on my screen so I did in fact read all the posts before I replied, I just didn't know/expect you were coincidently editing your post... which is something that doesn't strike me as odd given the fact that your original post had already been there like that for a few hours. And as for the arrogance, it seems to be somewhat contagious ¬_¬

Harisenbon wrote:Perhaps I'm not completeing understanding what you 're saying here, but how does a knowledge of the alphabet translate into knowing how to write most words? Most alphabets are not completely phonetic, and create pronunciations through combinations of letters that oftentimes have overlap. Only knowing A-Z, and no words, do you think it would be possible to spell Phone (fone), Etymology (Ehtimalowgee), etc?

I must admit you can't be completely certain, which is why I said 'fairly accurate'. Also, while the alphabet in most languages isn't used completely phonetically, they generally are used much more phonetically than in English. Even in English though there are more rules than you might expect (which is why chikara's 'ghoti' example is nice as a joke but of course completely unrealistic; 'gh' for example might be pronounced as 'f' in certain instances but these instances aren't completely random. If you know the most common values of each letter or letter combination in English I'd say there is quite a good chance you'd spell 'fish' correctly when you have never seen it written down before).

While difficult to correctly predict which kanji are used in new words that you hear, it is by far impossible. The first time I heard 電車を解体します, I could tell you exactly what kanji were being used in かいたい, because of the context, even though I had never hear the word before. The same can be send for words like 飲食 and 植物 which as long as you have some context for the word, are fairly easy to put kanji to.

Okay, I admit I was wrong to say that it is impossible, but not all kanji compound words are made up of kanji that are so indicative of the meaning of the word as a whole I think (真剣, 経済 etc), not to mention many place/personal names or words with ateji.

Last edited by JaySee on Mon 10.29.2007 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chris Hart wrote:You are right, uber_geekさん, it is best to learn kana first, then move to kanji. Just remember to study words, not just kanji.

I'm going to try doing that this time around. It didn't happen in one day, but I used to be able to call forth all the readings and meanings of the JLPT 4 Kanji, but I didn't know any words. Hopefully though, all that used energy didn't go to waste.

Chris Hart wrote:How about this fun one: ea - as in read (present or future) or read (past)?

I remember a Gallagher skit describing this problem in English, though I can't remember it's name. (I heard it on XM)

I wish I could recall the fellow's name, but a comedian recently commented that real comedians think of Gallagher the way real vampires think of Count Chocula.

I take it you don't like the Sledge-o-Matic. I was referencing that skit simply due to it's linguistic commentary.

I offered no personal opinion on Gallagher or what he does. I'm not familiar enough with him to have one. I recently had to do some googling and you-tubing just to find out who the heck he is. Try to remember that for the most part I don't know anything from American entertainment media starting from the early 1980s.